WASHINGTON, D.C. (01-31-17) – Following President Donald Trump’s announcement that he has selected Neil Gorsuch to fill the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court of the United States, Americans United for Life Acting President Clarke Forsythe said that AUL would work to support the nominee as a jurist known for his respect for the law.
Forsythe made the following comments:
“Neil Gorsuch’s nomination shows that President Trump values the legacy of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, and is dedicated to ensuring that the Supreme Court is staffed by jurists who respect the Constitution, not by politicians who vote with their policy preferences. Justice Scalia understood that a judicial commitment to the original meaning of the Constitution and the intent of the Framers is necessary in order to preserve our representative government, and the record of Neil Gorsuch demonstrates a similar dedication to constitutional originalism.”
In a speech to law students last spring, Gorsuch stated that “The great project of Justice Scalia’s career was to remind us of the differences between judges and legislators,” which is a distinction that other Supreme Court Justices have unfortunately neglected to embody, especially when it comes to abortion-related decisions.
Educated at Columbia, Harvard Law, and later at Oxford University, Gorsuch’s academic background includes experience as a law clerk for Supreme Court Justices Bryon White and Anthony Kennedy, an attorney with the Department of Justice, and his 10 years’ experience on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. During his tenure on the 10th Circuit, Gorsuch argued in favor of respecting the conscience rights of both Hobby Lobby and the Little Sisters of the Poor when they objected to the coercive contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act.
In his book The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia, Gorsuch eloquently argues that it “is incompatible with the promise of equal justice under law that any of us should feel at liberty to sit in judgement to decide who is and who is not entitled to the benefits of” being treated as “fully human,” and that ”human life qualifies as a basic good [and] it follows that we can and should refrain from actions intended to do it harm. Such actions, after all, by their very definition evince a denial of life’s innate worth.”
As the legal arm of the pro-life movement, Americans United for Life’s expertise on constitutional issues has led the Senate Judiciary Committee to rely on the testimony of our experts during the confirmation hearings for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Justice Stephen Breyer, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and Justice Elena Kagan. We look forward to once again having the opportunity to provide the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee with our expert legal analysis of Neil Gorsuch’s record as the confirmation process advances in the upcoming weeks.
Attorney Clarke Forsythe is Acting President & Senior Counsel at Americans United for Life (AUL), and author of Abuse of Discretion: The Inside Story of Roe v. Wade (Encounter Books 2013). Learn more atwww.aul.org For interviews, contact press@aul.org.
